I Just Completed My PDC at the Panya Project!

I’m ALIVE! I took a couple of week vacation from blogging and social media during which time I completed my permaculture design course. For my final group project I helped design the layout and phased execution for an ecovillage of self contained naturally built homes, funded and built through volunteer and educational workshops. the entire project is actually based on a real piece of property that one of the other students owns in Chiang Mai (northern Thailand) and if it goes ahead it could provide a good reason to come back to visit. Here’s the full floorplan that I created 🙂

On the final night my fellow students nominated me to host the “skills and no-talent show”. I opened it by reading a passage from the Fifth Sacred Thing, a book by Starhawk which I picked out especially to read during the course. It’s a post-apocalyptic story that takes place between an recovering and largely self sustaining San Francisco and the barren wastelands of Los Angeles which has been desolated by disease and drought. Even though it was written in the 80s it’s perhaps an even more relevant social commentary on today’s America and is full of paganism, corporate greed, war mongering, permaculture and is grounded in a healthy amount of ecofeminism to boot! A must read for all you aspiring witches and warriors!

After a raucous graduation last week I journeyed back to Pai with about ten my fellow students where we took over a little rural guest house just outside of town and I began teaching yoga and meditation every morning, which I found extremely enjoyable and fulfilling. During the day we went on nature rambles to waterfalls and hiked around the surrounding mountain villages until it got dark and we hobbled back into town. Then we spent the evenings eating street food and getting massages. It was a good week!

As we part ways and this chapter comes to a close I can’t help but laugh to myself how bizarre and wonderful it’s been, exploring this beautiful land with a bunch of colorful, bright eyed, eco warriors, cinnamon bun hugging and laughing like maniacs along the way. We were quite the Permacult, while it lasted 🙂 More pics to come. At some point. Possibly.